Best Bets / March 4-10, 2001

Movies

With shamelessly unscrupulous tabloid-TV news anchor Kelsey Grammer chronicling it all, media-star detective Robert De Niro and circumspect arson investigator Edward Burns, left, pursue a pair of sadistic killers on a rampage in New York City in the satirical thriller “15 Minutes.” Opens wide Friday.

Pop Music

R&B; priestess Erykah Badu, below, established herself as a musical force with her 1997 debut album “Baduizm.” On her new one, “Mama’s Gun,” she’s enlisted a cross-generational roster of black music luminaries, including Stephen Marley, Betty Wright, Roy Ayers and Roy Hargrove. Fresh off the No. 1 hit “Bag Lady,” Badu headlines the Universal Amphitheatre on Friday and Saturday.

Music

Winner of two Grammys on Feb. 21, both of them for its justly celebrated set of the complete (15) string quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich, the distinguished Emerson String Quartet returns here today at 2 p.m., playing quartets by Haydn (in G minor, Opus 74, No. 3) and Beethoven (F minor, Opus 95) Barber’s ubiquitous Adagio and Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 14, in Schoenberg Hall at UCLA.

Dance

The provocative, continuing collaboration between choreographer Hae Kyung Lee and composer Steve Moshier brings forth two new works on Friday and Saturday at the Electric Lodge performance space in Venice. Lee and her company join forces with Moshier and his Liquid Skin musicians for the premieres of “Mu” (which means dance and nothingness in Korean) and “Catch My Drift.”

Theater

Civic Light Opera of South Bay Cities’ 10th anniversary season launches with 1997 Tony winner “Titanic,” starring Richard Kline as captain of the ill-fated ship. The production has a brand-new look, thanks to two respected theater artists: Tom Buderwitz, who did the big, multifaceted sets--constructed by NBC Studios--and Shon Le Blanc, who designed the costumes. Opens Saturday in Redondo Beach.

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“Things You Shouldn’t Say Past Midnight,” Peter Ackerman’s screwball bedroom farce, will be presented live-radio-theater-style by L.A. Theatre Works. Directed by Gordon Hunt, the cast includes Richard Kind (“Spin City”), Jeff Donovan and Clea Lewis from the original New York production, and Alan Mandell, Cynthia Stevenson and Joey Slotnick. Opens Wednesday at the Skirball Cultural Center.

Art

“Valie Export: Ob/De+Con(Struction)” a 30-year survey of photographs, videos and installations documenting the Austrian artist’s early works, will open Saturday at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. The award-winning exhibition will look at the feminist artist’s early performance works, digital and conceptual photographic works, expanded cinema, and large-scale video and film works, which deal frankly with sexuality and repression, often through audience-participation performances. Above, “Adjungierte Dislokationen.”

Video

Former film critic Rod Lurie wrote and directed the acclaimed political thriller “The Contender,” which stars Joan Allen in her Oscar-nominated performance as a vice presidential candidate with a secret past. Jeff Bridges is also a supporting actor nominee for his role as the affable U.S. president. Gary Oldman also stars. Available Tuesday on VHS and DVD.